BCCF E-MAIL BULLETIN #407 Your editor welcomes any and all submissions – news of upcoming events, tournament reports, and anything else that might be of interest to BC players. Thanks to all who contributed to this issue. To subscribe, send me an e-mail ([email protected]); if you no longer wish to receive this Bulletin, just let me know. Stephen Wright HERE AND THERE Online adventures BC players have recently participated in a number of online events which, not limited by geographical location, have attracted entrants who would normally not be part of the respective competitions. One such was the President's Cup (February 6-7), normally restricted to Washington players but this year with participants from Oregon, California, Texas, New Jersey, Missouri, Ukraine, Armenia, Russia, India, Ontario, and Richard Ingram from this province. The overall winner of the five-round Swiss on chess.com (time control 70+10) was Russian Alexander Sharikov with 4.0 points ahead of two GMs and two IMs. Top Washington finisher was Valentin Razmov who is now seeded into the 2022 WA State Invitational, he also won the U2000 prize. Richard scored 2.0 points. The following weekend was the Apropos Adult Swiss #6 (February 13-14), the latest in a series of unusual events which offer substantial prizes but charge no entry fee. This is the result of sponsorship by Kent McNall who guaranteed a $750 prize fund, increased if more than twenty players entered. As it turned out this sixth edition attracted thirty players including Tanraj Sohal, Richard Ingram, Andrew Martin, and Don Hack from BC. Three of them won prizes: Tanraj tied for first with David Paez, William Schill, and Ananth Gottumukkala (all scored 4.0/5), while Andrew and Don placed second in their respective U1800 and U1600 categories. The event was a five-round Swiss hosted by chess.com with a time control of 90+5. Also on the same weekend but on the holiday Monday was the Juniors to Masters Winter Open (February 15), another five-round Swiss but hosted by lichess.org and with a shorter time control (15+10). Forty-five players participated in two sections, headlined by Romanian IMs George- Catalin Ardelean and Mihnea Costachi. Unsurprisingly they finished at the top of the crosstable, drawing against each other and winning the rest of their games; the difference was Ardelean took a half-point bye which left him tied for second with Carina D'Souza, Anni Guo, and Atharva Srinivas on 4.0 points, while Costachi placed first with his extra half point. Top BC players were Emilian Holmgren and Neale Monkhouse with 3.0. The U1200 Section was won by Jack Li and Shikib Mehri ahead of Gabriel Uy, Dennis Wang, and Ishaan Kelkar, all froom BC with the exception of Kelkar. 2021 BC Championship Qualification Normally participants in the BC Closed Championship either earn their spots through qualifying events or are invited from the ratings list which involves an activity requirement of ten CFC regular- rated games in BC in the previous year (full regulations). The pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of most qualifiers, plus the online events which are occurring are not regular rated. Therefore, for the 2021 BC Championship (which we hope will take place in October) the BCCF executive has voted to allow CFC-rated online events to count toward the ten-game activity requirement, even though such events can only be Quick rated rather than regular. Currently qualified: Grigorii Morozov (BC Closed), Neil Doknjas (BC Junior), Keith MacKinnon (BC Open). BACKTALK by Dan Scoones In recent days I have been going through Jan Hein Donner's collected articles on chess, chessplayers, and chess organizing, published by New in Chess in 2006 under the title The King: Chess Pieces. Hein Donner (as he preferred to be known) was a Dutch grandmaster who won several big tournaments in his career; for example, Beverwijk 1950 and Venice 1967 (ahead of Tigran Petrosian – the world champion) as well as the Dutch championships of 1954, 1957, and 1958. Despite these intermittent successes he was never really a top-level player. In 1983, at the age of fifty-six, he suffered a debilitating stroke that effectively put an end to his playing career. He passed away five years later, in 1988. The articles collected in The King were written and published in various newspapers and magazines over a period of more than thirty years, beginning in 1950 and ending in 1986. As a writer, Donner was never afraid to say exactly what he was thinking. The book opens with his very first essay, published in a Dutch chess magazine under the title On the Justice of Chess. One of its main topics was the unhappy (for Donner) result of a game against Borislav Milic, played in a team match between the Netherlands and Yugoslavia. Donner's assessment of that game is the subject of today's Backtalk. The opening moves were: Milic, Borislav – Donner, Jan Hein [D48] NED-YUG Utrecht (1.7), 22.06.1950 1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e3 a6 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 b5 8.Bd3 c5 9.0–0 Bb7 10.Qe2 Nbd7 11.Rd1 Qc7 12.h3 Be7 13.e4 cxd4 14.Nxd4 Nc5 15.e5 Nfd7 16.Bf4 Nxd3 17.Rxd3 Nc5 18.Rg3 b4 19.Nd1 g5 20.Bxg5 Ne4 21.Bf4 Nxg3 22.Bxg3 Donner writes: Black has reached a winning position. Not only is he an exchange up, but he has the upper hand even without the material advantage. Well, it's not clear what he means by that last statement. If we remove one of Black's rooks and instead put a knight somewhere, there is still the matter of his missing pawn and his somewhat insecure king. Back to reality. Black has won the exchange for a pawn, which in ordinary circumstances is a serious advantage. But here there are material and positional imbalances that are complicating matters. In order to win from this position, Black must find a strategic plan based upon a combination of logic and the calculation of precise variations. First, let us see how the game went. 22...Rg8 Queried by Donner, who recommends either 22...h5 or 22...0-0-0!? After the latter move a natural continuation is 23.Nb3 Kb8 24.Ne3, with only a small advantage for Black. 23.Nb3 Donner: I realized this was an excellent move, dashing every hope of mating the white king immediately. And yet I tried, wretchedly continuing the game with: 22...Qb6?! 24.Ne3 Rc8 25.Kh2 a5 26.Rd1 a4 27.Nd2 White now has some advantage due to his active knights. 27...Qc6 28.Qh5?! Stronger was 28.Ndc4!, but... 28...Rg7?? The losing blunder. After 28...Rd8 29.Qxh7 Rg6 30.Qh5 Rd4 the game is balanced. 29.Ndc4! And just like that, Black's position is falling apart. 29...Qe4 30.Nd6+ Bxd6 31.exd6 Kd7 32.Qb5+ Qc6 33.Qxb4 f5 34.Rd4 e5 35.Rc4 f4 36.Rxc6 fxg3+ 37.fxg3 Bxc6 38.Nc4 And here Black finally resigned. 1–0 Donner: After such a performance, one distinctly feels oneself to be a bungler... Let us return to the position after White's move 23.Nb3. As noted earlier, Black needs a strategic plan, one that both opposes White's intentions and advances his own interests. Have a look at the multi-purpose move 23...Bg5! Both 24.Rc1 and 24.Ne3 are prevented, the latter on account of the variation 24...Bxe3 25.Qxe3 Qc6!, when White has nothing better than 26.Qf3, acquiescing to a lost endgame. No better is 24.Nd2 due to 24...Qc2 25.Ne3 Bxe3 26.Qxe3 Rd8 and White will not last long. 24.f3!? This seems relatively best, but it is still inadequate. 24...Rc8! Activating another piece. After this White has no sensible answer to either ...Qc2 or ...Qc4 (according to circumstances), forcing the exchange of queens and dealing a killer blow to White's counterplay. I don't think we need go any further than this. Just two simple developing moves and White is in big trouble. The reader is invited to take White's position after 24...Rc8 and try to save it. Good luck. One would expect that after such a painful defeat, Donner would have carefully analyzed the game, found the possibility of 23...Bg5 followed by 24...Rc8, and modified his decision-making algorithm accordingly. But no... and here is where the backtalk comes in. Toward the end of the article, Donner lets fly with the following strange diatribe: I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I'll play it. Give me a bad position, I'll defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions and dull, drawn positions, I love them all and will give them my best efforts. But totally winning positions I cannot stand. What a load of rubbish. What is not to like about a totally winning position? But there's a catch: it is not a "totally winning position" if you don't know how to win it. Let's go back to fundamentals. Why is a rook superior to a knight? Because it controls more squares and has greater mobility. But if the rook is just sitting there not doing much, and the knight can establish itself on a strong central square where it cooperates with other pieces, the advantage in mobility may have no practical significance. In this game Donner got the "difficult positional game" that he claimed to love.